1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to liquid microbiocidal solutions containing an aryl alkanol and a microbiocidal compound dissolved in said aryl alkanol.
This invention also relates to compositions comprising a polymer processing aid and a microbiocidal compound dissolved in an aryl alkanol.
The present invention further relates to a process for imparting microbiocidal properties to polymer compositions comprising adding to the polymer composition a liquid microbiocidal solution comprising an aryl alkanol and a microbiocidal compound dissolved therein.
This invention also relates to a process for imparting microbiocidal properties to a polymer composition comprising adding to the polymer composition a composition comprising a polymer processing aid and a microbiocidal compound which is present in the polymer processing aid as the solute in an aryl alkanol solvent.
This invention further relates to compositions comprising a solution of a liquid plasticizer for vinyl resins and a microbiocidal amount of a microbiocidal compound dissolved in an aryl alkanol.
This invention further relates to vinyl resin compositions comprising an admixture of a vinyl resin and a vinyl resin plasticizer containing, in an amount sufficient to impart microbiocidal properties to the vinyl resin composition, a microbiocidal compound dissolved in an aryl alkanol.
2. Prior Art
It is presently common practice to protect polymer or plastic compositions from microbial, e.g. bacterial or fungal, attack by incorporating a microbiocidal composition into the polymer or plastic. The resulting polymer compositions prevent the deterioration of articles formed from the polymer compositions due to microbiological attack on the plasticizers or other polymer additives which are normally incorporated into the polymer to impart desirable physical properties to the article and to facilitate forming of the article.
Many of the available microbiocidal materials are solid and, in order to incorporate them homogeneously in the polymer composition, it is necessary to first mix them with a liquid which solubilizes or disperses the material uniformly and thereafter, mix the thus-formed liquid composition with the polymer. Unfortunately, the solubility of many of the microbiologically active materials in the more common solvent materials is quite low. Therefore, it is either difficult to incorporate a sufficiently high concentration of the microbiocidal material with the polymer or, if sufficiently high concentrations of the microbiocidal material can be incorporated in the polymer, an undesirably high concentration of the solvent must also be incorporated in the polymer with the resultant deterioration of the desirable characteristics of the polymer composition.
Attempts to solve these problems have met with varying, often limited, success. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,288,674 issued November 29, 1966 to Yeager and U.S. Pat. No. 3,689,449 issued September 5, 1972 to Yeager and Wilson disclose the use of solvents having a labile hydrogen, preferably nonyl phenol, to dissolve microbiocidally active phenoxarsine compounds, the resulting solution being subsequently incorporated into resin compositions. Unfortunately, the solubility of the phenoxarsine in nonyl phenol-plasticizer formulations is limited to low concentrations which necessitates incorporating nonyl phenol in the resin at higher concentrations than desirable in order to attain the desired phenoxarsine levels in the resin.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,360,431 issued December 1967 to Yeager discloses the use of labile hydrogen-containing solvents, preferably nonyl phenol, to dissolve microbiocidally active arsenobenzene compounds for subsequent addition to resin compositions.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,049,822 issued September 20, 1977 to Rei and Wilson discloses microbiocidal phenoxarsines dissolved in glycyl phosphites or glycyl phosphonates, the resulting solution being subsequently incorporated into resin compositions.